Attempted Launches

Everything was ready for Gemini IX on 17 May 1966. In
the Mission Control Center, Eugene Kranz assumed his duties as flight director,
presiding over a three-shift operation. The other two flight directors were
Glynn S. Lunney and Clifford Charlesworth. Only 200 newsmen were on hand,
compared to the thousand or more who had covered Gemini IV the year
before.33
Gemini was becoming more routine, hence less newsworthy.

After a smooth countdown, Atlas launch vehicle 5303 rose from pad 14 at 10:12
a.m. For two minutes the rocket's three engines rammed Agena 5004 skyward. Only
ten seconds before the two outboard engines were supposed to stop, however, one
of them gimbaled and locked in a hardover pitchdown position. The whole
combination - Atlas and Agena - flipped over into a nosedive and headed like a
runaway torpedo back toward Cape Kennedy.34

Shortly after the booster engines stopped firing, the guidance control
officer reported he had lost touch with the launch vehicle. Richard W. Keehn,
General Dynamics program manager for the Gemini Atlas, was alarmed and puzzled.
Telemetry showed that the sustainer engine had cut off, and a signal that the
Agena had separated from its launch vehicle followed. Agena signals kept coming
until 456 seconds after launch - then there was silence. Keehn raced over to
Hangar J, the General Dynamics data station, where the telemetry tapes pointed
to an Atlas engine problem. But television reports implied that the target [331]
vehicle was in trouble again, and Lockheed officials winced whenever they heard
someone speak of the "Agena bird"; this was ironic in the light of the problems
and delays caused by Atlas in the Mercury program and the success of Agena in
Project Surefire and Gemini VIII. Meanwhile, the Gemini IX Atlas and
Agena had plunged into the Atlantic Ocean 198 kilometers from where they had
started.35

As contractors worried about technical problems, NASA again faced the
necessity for a quick recovery plan when a target vehicle failed to reach orbit.
This time, however, the agency had something in the hangar, an alternate vehicle
- the ATDA. After the Agena exploded in October 1965, NASA had ordered General
Dynamics/Convair to be prepared to furnish a backup Atlas within 14 days of
another such catastrophe.36
And in April 1966, just a month before the attempted launch of Gemini IX,
Schneider had reminded Preston that he would have to be ready to launch the
alternate target in a hurry if the Agena again failed to keep its orbital
appointment. Now it had. On 18 May, Mathews wired Colonel John Hudson, Deputy
Commander for Launch Vehicles, Air Force Space Systems Division, to prepare
Atlas 5304 for launch on 31 May in a mission now called Gemini IX-A.37

With what had been the backup plan now in effect, the next question was what
to do if the ATDA, too, failed. At a staff meeting on 18 May, Mathews announced
that Gemini IX-A would be launched anyway, to rendezvous with the Gemini
VIII Agena, still in orbit. McDonnell, in any case, was confident of the
ATDA. When Mathews asked, in a management meeting in St. Louis the next day,
"Does anyone have any reservations about flying the ATDA?" the answer was no.38
That was just as well, because the motion of a rendezvous with the old Agena
soon had to be abandoned. Its orbit had not decayed to the expected extent, and
it was still sailing around Earth 402 kilometers up. Without the help of Agena,
high-altitude flight might take too much spacecraft fuel and leave the crew
stranded with no way to get to the lower orbit needed for retrofire.39
Deputy Administrator Robert Seamans and Mueller agreed with Mathews that
rendezvous with Agena 8 was too risky, but Gemini IX-A would still fly, even if
the substitute target did not make it. Extravehicular activity with the AMU was
a much needed venture in its own right.40

Long before these decisions were made, the Atlas contractors were frantically
busy. Keehn had bundled up the telemetry tapes and headed for San Diego, where
study of the data plus some tests located the trouble in the electrical
wiring.41
Within a week, Keehn and his group pinpointed the cause of the failure: a
pinched wire in the autopilot that produced a short circuit. This meant some
extra work on the electrical connectors, and General Dynamics asked NASA for an
extra day to complete the task and prepare Atlas 5304 for launch. The agency set
1 June as the new date.42

[332] Although General Dynamics had accepted the blame for the mission
failure, Lockheed was worried about telemetry signals that indicated a problem
with an Agena inverter. A nagging question persisted. Could the target vehicle
have gone into orbit if the Atlas had worked? This inverter provided power to
both the gyroscope and the sequence timer. To Lockheed's relief, a series of row
cameras located at Melbourne Beach, Florida, got pictures of the Atlas' outside
loop. They showed that the Agena passed through ionized gases from the booster's
exhaust, which caused an electrical short and failure of the inverter.43

On 1 June 1966, men and machines were again gathered at the Cape Kennedy
launch site, this time to try to send the alternate target vehicle and Gemini
IX-A into coordinated orbital flight. At the appointed time, 10:00 a.m., the
Atlas rose from pad 14. After a six-minute boosted phase, it tossed the ATDA
into a nearly perfect 298-kilometer orbit. Just one thing marred the picture:
telemetry signals suggested that the launch shroud covering the docking port had
only partially opened and had failed to jettison.

Concurrently, over on pad 19, Stafford and Cernan were going through their
countdown to launch. When the count reached the three-minute mark, a hold was
called so the spacecraft could be launched precisely on time for the best
catchup trajectory with its target. Almost immediately after the count resumed,
problems developed in the Cape ground launch control equipment when it tried to
send the spacecraft refined information on the exact launch azimuth. The launch
window (only 40 seconds long) closed, and Mission Director Schneider delayed the
flight for 48 hours. For the second time, Stafford and Cernan had to take the
elevator down. Stafford later said, "Frank [Borman] and Jim [Lovell] may have
more flight time, but nobody had more pad time in Gemini than I did!" By the
time Gemini IX-A lifted off, he had been in the two spacecraft (6 and 9) ready
for launch a total of six times.44